


Practical

by guera



Series: Conversations [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And probably needs a hug, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Laura Barton is awesome, Seriously such a Badass, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7292779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guera/pseuds/guera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark is sitting on her front porch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practical

Tony Stark is sitting on her front porch.

Laura has always been a practical woman, ever since she was seven and figured out Drunk Daddy was worse than Passed Out on the Couch Daddy and if she kept replacing his empties she could turn one into the other. It didn't always work, but there were at least a few times she avoided a beating or worse simply because he couldn't stand on his own two feet. 

Tony Stark is sitting on her front porch, and she has three children and a week's worth of groceries in the truck. So she does the practical thing and gets out. She's loading down the children with grocery bags (that is the point of children, right? To carry groceries in.) when Stark shows up behind her, so she drops a bag in his arms before he can even open his mouth.

“The ice cream is going to melt.”

He dips his head down to look over his sunglasses at her but then just holds out his arm for another bag. “I can carry more than one. I'm a whole six weeks post surgery.” 

“You were sick?” Lila asks, halfway up the porch steps, head craned around to look at him critically.

Laura eyes him herself as she unbuckles the sleeping baby from his car seat. She balances him against her chest and bumps the door closed with her hip, following her children and Stark up the steps.

“Not sick,” Stark is grinning his camera ready smile at her children and it's making her skin itch. “I think the doctors just want to crack my chest open every once in a while to see if I still have a heart.”

Cooper has got the door open and is heading towards the kitchen but Lila stops at the doorway to stare at Stark with wide eyes. “Do you?”

“The jury's still out. Come on, let's get these groceries inside.” He herds a still gaping Lila towards the kitchen and Laura closes the door and takes a moment just to breathe in the entryway, Nate a heavy and steadying weight against her chest. She can hear them in the kitchen, her children instructing Stark on the proper way to put groceries away.

“Carrots go in the drawer...in the _fridge_.” Her son knows better to verbalize the very obvious 'duh' that should follow that sentence considering his tone and she can hear Lila giggling. Her children, her bright and beautiful children.

Laura's a practical woman, she knows the conversation she and Stark are about to have will be a life changing one. She knows that she and her children are going to have to find a new normal. She knows how hard that is.

She was seven months pregnant when she got the call from Clint that she needed to run. Somebody was on his tail and he didn't think he was going to shake this one. It wasn't an unexpected call, she wasn't blind to what the man who shared her bed did for a living, and she was prepared. It took him six months to find her, another two weeks to convince her she could trust this Fury guy and an hour to agree that Fury would be the only one to know of her existence. That lasted for three years until Clint showed up at the door with broken and battered redhead, and an apologetic look on his face. 

He had apparently promised her home cooked chicken and dumplings. 

The man could not cook.

So she had found a new normal. He was still gone for long stretches of time, but now she at least knew he had an entire organization and one very determined redhead in his corner. 

That doesn't mean she didn't stop anticipating that phone call, telling her to run. And ever since Clint said, 'Cap needs me.' almost three months ago, she's known it's just a matter of time before she picks up the phone to hear him tell her she needs to run. She watched the news, late at night and out of earshot of curious children, and watched the grainy footage of the German airport and the too clear pictures of her husband being arrested. When the news hit that they had escaped, she tried to shelter her kids as best she could, all the while wondering how she was going to get her and three kids to where ever he managed to find safe port. She slept with the phone in her hand, waiting for that call.

Seems she wasn't even going to get that this time around. 

He was supposed to be _retired._

She knows they are done putting the groceries away, she can hear Cooper explaining the exact way to fold the bags, and she knows she can't stand in the entryway forever. She takes a deep breath of Nate's baby smell to ground her before striding into the kitchen.

“Hey guys, why don't you go into the living room and put on a movie?”

Cooper gives her a look, that boy is growing up too fast for her, but Lila immediately turns to Stark.

“Do you wanna watch Brave?” She is all big eyes and hope and Stark visibly flounders. 

She can see he's on the verge of saying yes, just because he doesn't want to say no, so she takes pity on him. “Mr. Stark and I are going to talk for a little while, maybe later, okay?”

Lila's face screws up like she's thinking about whining but Cooper, bless his heart, sidetracks her with, “Who says we're watching Brave? We watched that _yesterday_.” 

Lila turns her scowl on her brother, “But it's the best.”

Cooper rolls his eyes and she should probably scold him for that but then he says, “Race you for it.” and the kids disappear out the kitchen door, the sound of their bickering echoing back to them in the kitchen.

Stark opens his mouth but she cuts him off once again. “Let me put Nate down, I'll be back in a few.” 

He just shuts his mouth with a click and nods. He doesn't really want to have this conversation either. 

She takes her time in Nate's room, laying him down in his crib and making sure the baby monitor is getting a clear view. She closes the door softly behind her and slips the monitor in her pocket.

She peeks into the living room as she passes and smiles at the sight of her two oldest sprawled out on the floor, Brave playing on the TV. 

The smell of coffee hits her as she finally makes it into the kitchen. Stark tries smiling at her, but it falls flat.

“I made coffee.”

Her smile feels more like a grimace but she reaches out to accept the mug he hands her. “Thanks, let's drink it on the porch.” 

“Sounds picturesque.” 

She huffs but leads him back out to the porch to the two rocking chairs she and Clint picked out years ago. She settles into one with a sigh, cradling the warm mug in her hands, the baby monitor settled on her thigh.

She decides to avoid beating around the bush. “I don't know where Clint is, and even if I did...”

“I know where Clint is.” His quiet admisson cuts her off and she raises her eyebrows at him. “I'm not an idiot, I know how to follow the signs.” He takes a gulp of his coffee before continuing. “This isn't about Clint anyway, it's about you and the kids.”

She feels something tighten in her chest. “Nobody should know about us.”

“Yeah, can I just say kudos on that? Because seriously, keeping you and the kids under the radar for this many years is quite impressive, but I'm afraid your luck is likely to run out. You don't just have supers spies to watch out for, now there's several governments and, the more concerning, the general public.”

“I don't understand.”

Stark rubs a hand through his hair before turning to face her head on. “Clint's picture has been plastered everywhere. It's only a matter of time before someone sees it, and then thinks, 'Hey, that looks a lot like the father who is always yelling at the ref during the little league game.' or 'Hey, that's the guy that always buys three two liter Dr. Peppers when he gets gas here.' If they haven't already. Because while Hawkeye has done a good job of keeping out of the spotlight, it's one thing to be a shadowy assassin who's face or hell, even his codename aren't known to the world, and another to be a wanted ex-superhero with his own action figure.”

“I've seen those,” Laura admits, “They seem to think he has a thing for purple.”

“They've already got to Barney.” 

That feels like a physical blow to the chest. She actually has to sit forward a bit. There is no love lost between her and her husband's brother, in fact they've only met once, a wet Christmas over ten years ago, but he knows things.

Like her real name.

She takes a deep breath and tries to remind herself that Barney wouldn't give Clint up, no matter how they ended things.

It's shallow comfort.

She stares out into the yard, trying to decide which of the myriad of contingency plans she has she should go with when she realizes, “Where the hell is your car?”

He raises an eyebrow at her, “You think I drove here?” When she continues to stare at him, he relents with, “I landed the helicopter in a field.”

“A helicopter in a field.” She echos flatly.

Stark leans forward and pushes his sunglasses to sit on top of his head. He looks exhausted, she notes distractedly, but determined. “A helicopter that will take you and your kids anywhere you want to go, and new paperwork and enough cash to build a new life where ever that anywhere happens to be. You just have to pack light.” 

Her mouth twists in a parody of a grin. “I'm always packed.” She sobers quickly. “Why are you helping us? You signed the Accords, you fought against them in Germany...”

“I didn't want to fight in Germany.” He slumps back in the rocker, making in sway. “I didn't think it would actually come down to fighting. I thought Rogers would see sense. Not sure why I thought that but I guess hope springs eternal. I mean sure, not surrendering to the German police, okay I get that, but he saw what happened when Barnes gets turned into a freaky push button assassin and yet...” He vaguely waves a hand in the air. “We got played. Up, down and sideways. I don't know how much you know, but there was this guy that took the,” Stark's mouth screwed up a bit, looking for the right word, “the rift the Accords made and planted a nuke deep down inside it and watched it go off.” 

“Did you help them escape prison?” 

Stark's lips pull tight into a grimace, and he leans forward bracing his elbows on his knees, the coffee cup cradled between his hands. “No.” He looks braced for a hit, shoulders hunched. 

“Okay.”

He blinks at her and then unbends a bit. “I was expecting something else...I mean, don't get me wrong, from the moment they let me have contact with the outside world again I was fast tracking their trials, pulling my best and brightest from SI's legal team and diving into so much obscure law I feel like I should get an honorary law degree out of this,” Some life comes back into him and he sits ups, the hand not holding the coffee cup waving wildly, “And we had a solid case for Barton and Wilson. Neither have any criminal record,” at her look, he shrugs, “S.H.E.I.L.D. got rid of Barton's when he signed on. And while Wilson hasn't been as active in the whole, saving the world Avergers thing, I have a list as long as my arm for character witnesses for him, seriously everybody seems to love the guy. It wouldn't have been pretty, and there'd probably be some slap of the wrist nonsense but,”

“But they wouldn't have every government and their armies after them.” She finishes for him.

“Well, not _every_ government.”

She shoots him a look but he just takes a sip of his coffee, it has got to be cold by now, and shrugs noncomittedly. 

She decides to let it go. “The others?” 

He waggles his hand back and forth. “Lang has legal issues. Technically he wasn't even supposed to leave the state without his PO's say so, and he's not known to the public to be Ant-Man so there's that.”

“To be honest, the part that makes me want to bang my head against the wall the most is the fact the UN Council still hadn't figured out how they were going to try the three Americans since the US isn't a part of the ICC and while they could go through the ICJ, that's really meant for country vs. country, you know? I really think the only reason German authorities didn't put up a fight about keeping and trying them on German soil is because of Maximoff.”

She lets that sink in a bit before settling on, “It's all moot now, they're international fugitives who have all jumped to the top spots of the most wanted lists all over the world. Don't get me wrong, I love my husband, I'd give my right arm to have him back here with his family...but I'd also really like to strangle him for some of the choices he's made recently.”

Stark huffs a laugh with no humor. “Mind if I get in line behind you?”

She feels a wry smile tug against her lips. “You brought a helicopter to whisk my kids away to safety, that earns you the spot right behind me.”

“Speaking of, have you decided on a destination?”

She looks down at the baby monitor balanced on her knee, Nate sleeping the sleep of the innocent. She thinks about her other two children, their whole life has been this house, this little town with it's one school and an hour's drive to the nearest Walmart. She thinks about sleepless nights full of what ifs.

And she decides that ignorance is the very furthest thing from bliss.

“I'm not going to run, “

“You can't just stay here, they will find you eventually.”

“I'm not saying I'm going to stay here, I'm just not going to run off and start a new life. I worked damn hard keeping this one safe and I plan to get it back one day.”

She doesn't squirm under the look Stark's giving her, but its' searing in it's intensity. “I might have an idea, if you want to stay in the loop of this chaos.”

“Yeah?”

Stark twists the coffee cup in his hands before smiling at her. It's a bit sharp and brittle, but sincere in it's own way. “What's your stance on cowboy boots?”

 

*****

 _Good evening and welcome to Channel 3 News at ten o'clock. I'm Emily Rivers and our top story tonight comes from the rural Russet County where authorities are still trying to determine the cause of an explosion that leveled a single family farmhouse. Reports are showing that no survivors were pulled out of the fire and authorities state that it may take several days to comb through the wreckage for any victims._

_In other news, Stark Industries is opening their newest facility this weekend as stockholders hope to see stock prices bounce back from lows not seen since Tony Stark stopped weapons development four years ago. Stark has faced international scrutiny ever since several former members of the Avengers Initiative escaped custody and went on the run_.

**Author's Note:**

> So CA;CW tried to kill me with feels. Laura didn't have much development in AoU and so I played around with her characterization a bit here. There will be more, (pretty sure I've got Nat and Tony next)
> 
> If you notice anything wonky, let me know :) Thanks for reading!


End file.
